Pylon Operator
by natis1
Summary: Short story. A protoss discovers what it means to serve a zerg hive after an unlikely meeting. This story takes place long after the games.


In memory of Geoff "iNcontroL" Robinson. You were one of the greatest things to happen to StarCraft. You were funny and wholesome and you spoke honestly. You were everything that I ever aspired to be.

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this text are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

* * *

Hundreds of years ago, the great scientist Artos discovered that a radioactive crystal lattice could store and generate useful electricity with almost perfect efficiency. So powerful were these devices that they enabled the teleportation, giving us Protoss a massive edge against our enemies, zerg aliens. Teleportation could happen on a large scale, with the warp in of structures or people, or allow the fast transmission of data. This device quickly became the backbone of the faster-than-light internet, and for its energy generation capabilities Artos named it the pylon. Pylons functioned a lot like batteries, and like batteries they had a maximum charge they could hold before being damaged. Unlike batteries or capacitors, which were charged externally and could be regulated by simply not allowing voltages above their rating, pylons were charged from radioactive decay, from within. The only way to regulate them was to shut off the decay by blocking it with an internal lead shield. As pylon operator, this was my job.

I only had two obligations at work. If the charge level ever reached or exceeded 95%, I was to turn on the lead shielding, and if it ever dropped below 90% I was to turn it off. Each pylon had four operators who collectively maintained it 24/7. It may have been a simple job, but it was a prestigious one. With a 12 year university degree, it was perhaps the best job one could expect. Certainly better than being a dropout and having to serve in the army as a zealot. There was something appealing about spending so long learning the principles of pylons and then getting to control one for yourself. Even though I was a billion kilometers away from the device, it was like I saw the science in action. 95%, my display read, and I instinctively flipped the switch and watched on my display as the pylon stopped glowing. The pylon was not powering any structures besides a few currently offline photon cannons, and only minimal energy was drawn by a few personnel who physically guarded it, so it often produced more power than it could use. It would be several hours before I had to turn off the shielding.

I sat for a few seconds absentmindedly until my glasses detected my boredom. A robotic female voice spoke in my head: "Hey IC. Would you like to resume _The Lone Zealot?_" I agreed in my thoughts and the female voice began reading from chapter 14. "The zealot's ambition was to pilot a carrier, but to earn that right, he would need to earn his pilot's license. Suddenly the power in his outpost went out. Without any ability to communicate with Auir, fear gripped at him. He heated up his psionic blades and took out the trinoculars, preparing himself to defend the outpost. He had read through the zealot handbook the night before and diligently followed every mandate it suggested to survive..." I loved the story, it was a favorite among my kind. Me and many before me had listened to the harrowing showcase of individuality that the book presented. Even though I avoided being a zealot by going to college, I still greatly looked up to them. We are all warriors of some sort: Every piece of our infrastructure served our military, but only a small but brave fraction fought on the frontline. These were the zealots, and we were grateful to them for keeping our cities safe.

An alert interrupted my story. I watched on the camera as two laser cannons powered up next to my pylon, causing its energy to start dropping rapidly. I flipped the lead shielding off, and the power level stabilized around 80%. A heavily armored, mindless insect crawled towards one of the cannons, and seeing it power up, it belched a green acid onto it. The cannon's energy shields easily blocked the shot, and it fired back, a blinding beam of light tearing through the creature's armor, which caused it to instinctively scream out in pain and run away, leaving a trail of red blood in its wake. A zerg roach. A collection of alien species fighting under a unified hivemind, zerg were our ancient enemies. The Protoss's continued existence relied on us continually fighting them. Under their rule, our genetic code would be assimilated into an unthinking, uncaring machine, leaving us without even a sense of self. Everyone played a role in fighting this threat, from the pilots of our flagship carriers to our ground force of zealots, to those who kept our pylons running.

The pylon recharged and the photon cannons shut off, but that roach remained in my mind all day. There was no strategy in its actions, nothing I would expect from an organized collective. It wasn't likely, but perhaps my assumptions were wrong. I enabled the lead shield when the pylon hit 95% charge, and it started to drop in power again. As existential dread hit me, I realized I needed to sanity check my basic assumptions. So I let the pylon continue to drain at 90%. I had done this many times before, just to reassure myself I had some control. It continued dropping- 89, then 88%. At this point I would have normally lowered the shield but I decided to keep watching.

When the pylon hit 85%, it began to charge again. The screen still displayed the shield as up, which should have prevented this. There was no physical way for it to generate energy with lead blocking the battery input. I quickly scrambled to reboot the control panel and when it powered back up, it showed the shield as down and the pylon at 86%. _What the hell,_ I thought to myself, and then to my psionic computer I thought: "Tell my job that I'm using one of my stored days off tomorrow, and after work navigate my vehicle to the nearest warp station."

…

"You wanna go to Winter's Gate on Void 3, VI?" The gentleman selling me the ticket asked incredulously. I nodded and explained that my pylon was there and it needed some maintenance, he eventually added my ticket to my psionic computer after staring at me for a few awkward moments. "Well… be sure you have some good armor, and watch the map so you don't get torn apart or blasted to pieces." I continued to the warp chambers and closed one of the doors. My computer loaded the ticket and soon I was warping into a military outpost. Dozens of massive intricate buildings stood against a cold, harsh wind and I faintly smelled burning flesh. A few heavily armored creatures gave me weird glances, but decided I was alright after scanning my mental signatures and went back to guarding the outpost.

I started running outside the base using the map provided by my computer, which it had downloaded from the base. I saw my pylon and the photon cannons guarding it. I had never seen it before in person, but it looked more majestic and bright than on the screen I controlled it from. I saw its lead shields flicker on and realized that I had never actually seen anyone in the shift after mine for the last two years. Scanning the ground, I discovered a thin trail of alien blood barely staining the snow. Thank goodness I had come soon enough. I followed the trail. When my computer warned me I was advancing too far forward past the frontline, I paused and took stock of my equipment. No psiblade, anodized aluminum shield generator for life support only. If even a larva caught me, I'd probably die.

The trail seemed to disappear, until I heard a quaking in front of me. Before I could react, like a giant sand-worm, the roach I had seen earlier dug itself out of the snow and appeared just a few meters front of me. It stood at twice my height and ten times my volume, casting a shadow over me. From this distance I could easily smell its acidic breath. I glanced away briefly, my photon cannons were kilometers away, and even if I could have outrun this creature I was very clearly in its spitting range. I discarded that thought, I was seeking this alien out, and encountering it instead of anything else was a lucky break for me. So instead I tried to communicate psionically with it. "Fearsome warrior. I come here to ask of you but one question. What drove you to act in such a way?"

I cowered under its presence as it stared at me, its natural spikes glistening in the sunlight. Until, after a few moments, it responded in my mind. "First of all, name's Dario, and I ain't much of a warrior. And, uh, maybe this is just because I am not a Protoss but I really don't understand your formality. As for what I did, I was scouting for information and I didn't notice the defenses until it was too late. Anyway, I could ask you the same question, you're quite far outside your base for being so unprotected."

Awe took me for a few moments, before I slapped myself for talking in such a stilted manor. It had just seemed appropriate to me when dealing with an alien that could have so easily killed me. "S… sorry. I'm Jeff. That place you ran into, I control those structures. I wan-"

"No you don't," the roach interrupted, nearly spitting in my face. "...or you wouldn't be out here trying to get yourself killed like this." He paused for a few moments, and I could see waves of neural energies passing between him and the ground beneath. "Looks like you were scouted walking here and you'd probably get torn up if you turned around. I guess I could take you with me. I'm not sure if you have much other choice." I pondered for a few moments before agreeing. Dario sat on his back claws to let me climb onto his heavily armored and spiked back. I held on tightly as his mind instructed, as he dove into the snow. His spines cut a path through it that shielded me, while quickly masking his burrowing trail.

Just under the snow lay a massive cavern system literally made of flesh extending in all directions. A thin, acrid slime coated the walls and floors. There was no light in these caverns, but my infrared visor let me see as Dario ran through the cavern. My computer showed my location as heading further away from the military base, from my pylon. The roach's six clawed feet seemed to meld with the cavern floors, letting Dario quickly run through these tunnels. His biological body seemed to outpace our mechanical vehicles on this surface. I nervously pressed my face tightly against his scales to stay hidden as the underground passages widened and started ascending. Several smaller six limbed creatures passed us but either didn't notice, or didn't care about my presence. Soon, our passage ramped towards the surface, which was itself covered in the same slimy flesh like the caves. It was a dark purple in the sunlight, and ran along the roads and over the tops of massive chitinous buildings adjacent to the roads. Thousands of creatures of all shapes and sizes crawled, ran, or flew along these roads beside us. The roads were crowded, yet everyone traveled along them quickly without creating any jams or anyone bumping into others. Dario waited for me to adjust my grip so I wouldn't fall, and climbed up one of the buildings and through one of the "windows" (which were more holes than real windows).

"Well, here we are. My dwelling." The room could have been no more than 15 square meters. Most of this was taken up by a large pod that I could only have assumed was Dario's bed. "Well… what do you think of it?" Like every other structure, it seemed to be made from a bone-like material and was covered from roof to ceiling with the same slime. Except unlike the dark purple slime of the outside world, the one inside seemed to be both luminous and color changing, and was a soft brown with a green glow. The room wasn't square, or any other regular shape, and on one side the roof smoothly sloped downwards. Aside from the pod, the room was completely empty of any material possessions or amenities.

"It's… less… triangular than my place but much more area." I wondered if I should be honest or not but figured I was surrounded by the mental waves of so many zerg that if I thought of any lies, it would quickly get detected. "It's quite empty, though. You don't seem to have any repair-bots roaming around, or displays, or computers, or even a dresser or mirror." I hopped off of Dario and landed on the brown slime, bouncing a little off of it like a trampoline as my impact sent small pressure waves. "Your floors are quite pretty but they smell absolutely awful. I guess it's like if you were to combine starch or sugar, water and some of that Terran refined oil."

Dario didn't even seem to mind the comments about emptiness, but looked more confused than offended at the comments towards the floor. "Huh, weird. Well I'm sorry, I cannot control what it smells like, only how it looks. I don't exactly need anything else you mentioned though. My body is covered with the same color changing essence as the floor." His spikes briefly glowed purple as if to confirm his words. "So we can… dress however we like without needing anything extra. My mirror, computer, screens are all around me. The psionic energies created around here can project illusions that are much more vivid than any screen, letting me see myself, or anything that I want to. They also form a network that connects me to the brain of the hive, which is just about the strongest computer I could ask for. You could probably attune with it if you wanted to know what I meant."

"No freaking way, dude!" I angrily responded. "You know what makes us Protoss unique is..." my mind blanked and I consulted some notes on my computer briefly to figure out what to say. "Well we are unique. We're not some collective that cannot even clothe itself a certain way or dress our house without politely asking a hive. We get a choice in where we work, and what we do. And we might need more to live but at least we are not living in such a barren place."

Dario, for the first time, actually looked a little offended. But he managed to keep his composure. "I… I. I don't see what you mean. When I choose what outfit I want to wear, to the best of my knowledge it looks exactly the way I think it does. Just as my senses lead me to believe this is the best place ever." He gestured around with one of his clawed feet. "I don't serve the collective because I lack any choice but because when I'm among it I feel strongly at peace. It provides me guidance and purpose and nourishment and happiness. I enjoy my life here so of course I feel obligated to protect it."

"But what even is your life, Dario? All that you know and believe was shaped by this swarm for its own desires. It clearly aims to use you for its own benefit. All you sense and believe, your emotions and your mind and even the decisions you think you make, were shaped by a collective that only wants you for your utility to it." I pointed at the slime on his walls. "You even said yourself that the images this stuff creates are illusions, mere myths used as a tool of control."

"Well, Jeff, we're not Terran, nor do they or anyone else have any place in ruling us..." Quietly, he let out a sigh, "Anymore..." Dario sat down on the slime, which seemed easily able to support his body weight. "We haven't had any real concept of authoritative structure for the last four or five generations. You are right that the hive's motives are to its own benefits, but its benefits are my benefits, and the benefits of every other organic molecule in its network. And it's almost certainly true that everything I've ever thought has been manufactured: Many of the negative emotions that evolved naturally, that were so dire to survival as individuals have been stripped from my genome… but just because they're constructed doesn't make my thoughts or emotions any less real or valid. I really am happy here- My needs are fulfilled and I have a purpose in life. There's nothing I could ask for that I lack, and to me that's a really beautiful thing."

"I just…I guess I just don't see how you are able to so calmly and casually defend working for a system that you have so little control over. Wouldn't such a hive sacrifice the lives of the few for the many? And what do you do if you are chosen as one of those few? Also, what if you have some grand or small ideas for how things should change but nobody else accepts them? Shouldn't you have a chance to try them out to see how they would work? And how can you be okay with owning so little?" I gestured around the room as if to indicate that there was nothing there besides a bed.

Dario walked up to me and calmly put the side of one of his clawed legs around my back. I flinched for a moment but eventually accepted it. "I would say, the way our hive is, it convinces us to make these sacrifices voluntarily. There's no shortage of beings willing to take their own lives for the benefit of others. It's heroic, and noble. That's what I thought when I chose the roach strain as a larva, and why I so freely charged into danger earlier today. To defend my hive and collect scouting knowledge for it was enough for me. As for ideas. We coordinate and share our thoughts so freely that thoughts never feel like our own for more than a moment or two. We have no stake in defending and establishing them but for the benefit of the hive and if others disagree then they quickly vanish. It might seem like a conservative approach that allows for no change or creativity but in practice it lets us quickly optimize all that matters and leaves us free to ponder art and science and all that doesn't." Finally, he glanced at his bed. "Do you not like it? It's perfect for me and all I really need to own besides this space for myself. Frankly I'm more concerned how you deal with trash and clutter. It's nice to live in a world where all that exists is living because everything becomes important and nothing ever is worth disposing of."

I leaned back into Dario's leg and glanced up at his many teeth. "I guess you make some alright points. But I'm still doubtful." I checked my computer, but much to my disappointment it was unable to connect to the internet. I stared blankly into it for a few moments before remembering a few other things. "For example you mentioned you pondered art but the best I can tell, your cities somehow look both bland and chaotic at the same time. I don't really see any art at all, nor room for creativity in a collectivism. Also, it seems like you don't really have anything you can do if your hive turns against you for whatever reason. How are you not constantly living in fear of that?"

"I am not afraid for my own life, sure we as individuals sometimes act irrationally but as a collective we don't. It's probably happened before but I cannot ever recall a case where a zerg was torn apart by its own hive. Certainly not for disagreeing with the hive. If anyone has died for any reason it has probably been because they intentionally hurt the hive. I heard a story that your dark archons used to be able to brainwash our kind with fear and hatred. Besides, we aren't controlled by the fear of being torn apart because fear's an emotion we lack."

Dario continued. "Regarding art though, you are right. Our cities and caverns and even houses really are not pieces of art. They are build for maximum efficiency with regards to space, materials, and so on, without any concerns for how they look. Anyway, the creation and study of art and science and philosophy do have an important place in our society. They help us understand the world better, and provide a purpose for many of us. We cannot all be fighters and actually we'd rather have as few fighters as we can. Because war kind of sucks. But you might notice there's not a single physical painting, and that's because all that we do create can only be seen through our hive. Mostly because storing information that way is the most reliable and takes the fewest materials. Our art extends just beyond paintings though. We have immersive games and series of sensations, and interactive dreams, and plenty of other formats that just couldn't exist outside the mind. There is many thousands of times more extraordinary content than one could experience in a lifetime. We are constantly iterating on the art we've created to make it better."

I was surprised for a few moments. Everything I had ever learned about zerg indicated they were nothing more than savage beasts only capable of destruction. Hearing they had art amazed me. "But if you're always iterating on stuff, without a care for who made it or who iterated on it before, then does your identity even matter? Do you even have an identity?" I realized the second of these questions was fairly silly after asking it.

"Well you definitely know the answer already. I am Dario. More than that though, I have my own life story and experiences and thoughts and personality. These things may very well have emerged through or be tied in with the hive, but that doesn't make them not mine. These sorts of things will not matter after I die, or even while I live to most others in this hive. But I and every other zerg have a group of those that I associate with and share thoughts with directly. To everyone in this group my identity matters, as does the identity of everyone else in it to me. You might think of it like friends, but unlike friends there's not a lot of structure or gate-keeping. They just form naturally as we share our thoughts and read the thoughts of others." He paused for a few moments. "But no, my identity doesn't matter outside of that, nor to the hive. And that's alright with me. I have no desire for fame or name recognition. Such goals always have struck me as absurd. I and everyone I know in the hive would rather make the world a better place without a care for how they die. And, likewise, I don't really care who did what in our history."

I sat down on the slime and contemplated his words. Running my fingers against it. It was quite soft. It smelled bad, but not as bad as I remembered it when I first entered Dario's house. Had I misremembered? "I guess you make some good points. I'd debate you further but I cannot seem to connect to the internet, and I feel rather helpless without it. It's such a nice source of knowledge that I'm just used to having in confrontations. Alright. I'll guess I'll just ask some stupid questions then instead. Why does your house have no food?"

"Oh, yeah. Sorry about your internet. If any of your satellites tried to establish themselves over this city they'd probably be shot down by our fliers. It's nothing personal." He laughed. "but we are still at war so what can I do? Like you, we consume light. Well, less directly. I'm fed by the slime that grows on my body and its fed by the sun and air. This mouth is just for fighting, and I guess biting my way through obstacles. Like you I can't even talk, at best I can maybe try to growl." Dario made a very quiet and low pitched growl that I barely heard before returning to laughter.

"Do you ever reckon there'll be peace between us?" I asked wistfully, starting to roll around in the slime, enjoying the feel of it against my porous skin.

"We all hope so. It certainly seems possible if we can even have this conversation. Speaking of, I should probably get you back to your place, or at least as close as I can while being outside of cannon range. I don't want anyone killing you since you are an enemy and all." He said, picking me up gently off of the slime with his front two legs.

"Or I could stay here and attune myself." I slipped out of Dario's grasp and began to focus on the waves of thoughts traveling through the floor beneath me. I heard the minds of innumerable creatures, all speaking gibberish, yet with careful focus some of it started to make sense. I deactivated my shields. They only dampened my ability to receive psionic messages, and what need did I have for them among companions, anyway? In that moment, for the first time, the slime beneath me, that was a part of me, started to smell good. "What does it matter if I stay here or go back?"


End file.
